Archive for February 22nd, 2011

22.02.11 – Finland’s schools are closed this week for Winter-Break. The break was originally called hiihtoloma or “skiing holiday” because it was used to help children develop their cross-country skiing skills. Most of Emma’s friends have left with their families to places like Spain or Dubai so I don’t think they will be honing their skiing skills.

We needed to find something to do outside so we decided to head South for a walk on the ice. The ice along the coast is solid and it’s not difficult to find cross-country skiing trails and foot paths to indicate safe travel. When we were out, there were a number of other people as far as the eye could see taking advantage of their free time like we were doing.

We hiked out a couple of kilometers to channel marker frozen solid in the ice. Although there were footprints continuing past the marker, we decided to turn back once we reached it. I’m not familiar with what the channel marker was indicating but there are a number of ferries which depart to St. Petersburg, Stockholm and Tallinn from either side of where we were walking so I knew we would eventually come to a point where there was a path cut in the ice from one of the daily ferries.

Our “trailhead” to the ice was located next to a popular restaurant called Cafe Carusel so on the way back home we warmed up with hot chocolate 😉